Confessions of a High School Loser, Part 3

Gathering with old classmates should promote at least one thing: perspective.

During my high school reunion, I asked many former classmates why they chose to attend. Most often they responded that either curiosity or a desire to meet old friends and acquaintances drove their decision pretty much the same reasons I came. They were a casual and self-confident lot overall, completely at ease with their middle-aged selves, reminiscing with laughter at teenage angst and embarrassment.

There was probably a self-selection bias – those perhaps less happy with their lot in life likely avoided the occasion. Or maybe many were simply too busy or too stretched to come, sandwiched as we are between growing children and aging parents, not to mention multiple and pressing financial and career obligations. Sadly, our valedictorian did not attend. But our high school student council president was there — gone was my ugly teenage envy as I admired her social grace and the pride and love in her voice as she described her adopted Vietnamese daughters.

Overall, everyone looked great. Not just well turned out for the occasion, but relaxed, happy. With some wrinkles, yes, but earned more from smiling than from frowning. The women generally looked better than the men – sorry guys – an observation which should provide solace to the beauty industry and its unabashed gender targeting. (I continue to nurture a theory that those who stayed in British Columbia or eventually meandered back to the Okanagan Valley aged better than those of us who opted for a more frenetic existence: it really is Lotusland.)

One classmate, upon her rather tipsy departure from the dinner and dance on the second night, suggested that we looked a lot more fabulous than our kids. Thinner, more fit. Well, we did grow up in the narcissistic “me” decade after all. Not sure, however, if that says much about our parenting skills, as we hover above our offspring, not sending our children outside to play as we were, eventually called to dinner by mothers wearing aprons on cement stoops in newly bred suburbs.

Our teenage years were not a simple, happy time like the nostalgia our parents felt for the postwar years, nor did we experience the cultural rebellion of the ’60s like our older siblings and cousins. No one fondly remembers disco and we’re pretty much in universal agreement that the 1970s constituted a fashion disaster of epic proportions – and we’re pretty dumfounded to see some of it return as retro chic. We grew up in the shadow of Watergate, the oil shocks, double-digit inflation, wage and price controls, the endless debate to repatriate our constitution, the rise of the PQ in Quebec. By the time we graduated in 1980, the Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan and a theocratic revolution was underway in Iran – events that have cast a long shadow over global politics ever since.

What can we learn from reflecting back on our past and comparing our varied life trajectories? As suspected, I learned that virtually nobody felt supremely at ease as a teenager – the former jock confessed to a friend that he was nervous among his peers for appearing “too” athletic. I gave one of those “popular guys” a big bear hug, and he laughed when I told him how much that hug would have meant to me in Grade 12.

We seem to have a fuller appreciation of diversity and difference now. Many were appalled as we recollected the corporal punishment inflicted by some teachers in elementary school (often unfairly seizing on the same kids over and over again). No one would ever get away with that now, mused a current teacher. I spoke with several classmates about how difficult it must have been to grow up as a closeted gay or lesbian teenager in Kelowna in the 1970s, or as one of the few visible minority kids. How rampant was our homophobia or racism, either in overt or systemic, non-deliberate forms? How deeply felt were the wounds that we may have inadvertently inflicted?

I learned most from my conversations with the guys. My own teenage brother died suddenly before I entered adolescence, a fact poignantly recalled by many, giving me for the very first time a community perspective on my very personal grief. Because I never had a “boyfriend” as such, the young men I went to high school with seemed like a completely different species to me. I’ve thought long and hard about their struggle – to win the respect of their fathers’ generation, but at the same time not be like them as they coped with changing social roles of women and contradictory notions of masculinity. I was startled at the openness and depth of many conversations, humbled by their thoughtfulness and unguarded honesty.

Above all, reunions should hopefully promote some perspective on lives lived; an opportunity to look back with humour, and let rest once and for all the demons of high school. This hit home when the girl who relentlessly teased me in Grade 9 – now a mother and grandmother – hugged me with remarkable warmth, suggesting with sincerity how nice it was to see me again.

Hearing others recount their memories made my own seem less ridiculous in retrospect. Confessing the crushes we had on one another; the stupid things we did or said; the strange little mementoes we kept; the classes many took to strategically slide through to graduation day – did KSS really offer Guitar 12 and Pottery 12? And afterward, the wrong and right career paths taken, marriages and relationships that did or did not work, ongoing family dramas, health crises endured or overcome.

As I unpacked my suitcase upon returning home, I unwrapped the contents of my “loot bag.” A black and gold lanyard in the colours of the KSS Owls; a pen which I’ll no doubt stuff into my drawer at work; and a rather cheesy Christmas ornament, a brass cut-out of the facade of the old east wing of the school, which burned down in that dramatic fire in 1979. When I hang it on the tree this December, I’ll be hoping that some have the remaining energy and enthusiasm to organize a 40th KSS reunion. I’ll be there.

This is the third part of a three part series. For part one, click here. For part two, click here.